Last night I went along with Ben to see Porcupine Tree a band that Gerrod had put me on to a while back. It was my first concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, yet another Carling sponsored music venue in London. The venue itself is the smallest I’ve been to so far, but with a just a bit more capacity than The Arena back home. This venue has three floors with pretty much every seat or position having an easy view of the main stage.
I’m terrible at trying to describe bands, so I won’t try, but I think that if you like any of Porcupine Tree’s albums, I definitely can recommend you to see them live. Somehow their songs are delivered with much more vibrancy than what a recording seems to give them, allowing them to drive home their songs, if not sometimes perhaps a little bit too loudly. The front man last night held a much better conversation with the audience, all who seemed to be fairly big fans and predominantly older (think late thirties, almost early forties). It’s also one of the first times, I’ve ever seen someone perform in their bare feet.
After watching them last night, I realised that I liked a lot more of their songs from the In Absentia album over those from Deadwing, perhaps because I think the former tends to be more melodic with less of the heavier rock undertones I tend not to favour in the latter. It was a great night for a Wednesday and a big thanks to Ben for getting those tickets ages back.
And what is wrong with “(think late thirties, almost early forties)”.
What I want to know is why were they not in bed at that ungodly hour of the night ?
I don’t think I mentioned that there was anything wrong wih that age group, but it’s just something that I observed. As for the last comment, well it was pretty early (I think it finished up just after 10:30pm :-))
I know what you mean about the albums Pat. My favourite song that they played here was “Trains”, it really stood out as a shiner *queues it up in winamp*. The lead guy played NY shoeless too! Must be his thing.
Glad you enjoyed the concert! Did Robert Fripp open for you guys, and if so did you see him?
Yeah, funnily enough, “Trains” was my fav as well that night. We did come in to watch the end of Robert Fripp but we didn’t get to see that much. He had apparently lost his voice so was just playing on stage. The audience gave him quite a loud cheer, so he must have been pretty good but we didn’t see enough of him to justify an opinion.
That’s interesting, we saw him play and it was a 50 minute melodic set of just him sampling effects off his guitar, effectively. Lost his voice? I thought he just didn’t sing at all…
We thought it was pretty crappy really, but the rest of the crowd gave him a standing ovation.